Feb 2014 Update on New Years Resolution

I've said before that I've started a resolution for 2014 to do more weightlifting. I initially set myself the ambitious goal of 100 minutes per week (lifting 10 KG at any one time, either holding one 10 KG dumbbell or 2 x 5 KG dumbbells), which turned out to be far too ambitious. Nevertheless, I still managed to do a reasonable and regular amount. See the results below.

As you can see on the graph, there is a point when my weightlifting starts to plateau, but that is due to an injury I had when I fell over.

In addition to tracking how much weightlifting I've been doing, I've also been keeping track of how much walking and how much learning I've been doing. I have installed an app called Noom Walk on my phone. All you have to do is install this app and automatically it tracks how much walking you do per day. It is not a perfect app. There were days when I'm sure I walked around quite a bit but it didn't log any of the walking I did. But nevertheless, I like the idea of have everything measured for you without too much effort. The data can be exported from the app in a CSV file.

In terms of learning, I am using the app AnkiDroid to create flashcards for myself. In fact, I am a long-time Anki fan and have been using it since my university days (probably for about ten years now) but only in the last few years have I used it on my phone. I don't study anymore but I still like to learn about new things, so I put new, interesting, and important knowledge into Anki and get into the habit of revising this new knowledge in the morning when I am on the training coming in to work. The great thing about AnkiDroid is that it also keeps track of your progress over time. The worst thing about AnkiDroid is that the synchronization is horrible. That is to say, I get into the habit of syncing every time I start using this app and every time I stop using it, but there are still syncing errors that appear. It is not like Google Keep or Evernote that sync automatically and seamlessly in the background. 

Many people are skeptical of measuring progress like this. Just because I measure progress it doesn't mean I will actually do it, but I do believe that measuring progress is a good first step because you don't know if you've failed unless you measure your performance. Seeing yourself perform poorly can give you motivation to do better. Another idea I've been having is to impose upon myself a financial punishment if I don't get a certain result.

New Year's Resolution 2014: 100 Minutes of Exercise per Week

A month or so ago, I told everyone that, as a New Year's resolution for 2014, I would join a gym. Then I told myself that I would get heavier dumbbells so I can workout at home. I realised that if I wanted to be fit, I needed to define a goal and measure my progress. So here it is: 100 minutes per week. Why one hundred? It's a nice number, and many experts recommend exercising three times a week, each time for 30 minutes, so that comes to about 90 minutes, rounded up to 100 minutes. The exercise can be any exercise, but my focus will be on weights because I would like to develop more muscles. As they say, a bad measure is better than no measure, so I will stick with this and see how it goes. My plan is to track how I am tracking with my goal in a spreadsheet in Google Docs and to report on my progress every month.